Is this so that people can stalk me more effectively? But no, I did not have to enter CILIP as a tag for people working there to locate my blog and post comments about one of my posts. CILIP was just in the text of one of my posts. Given that people are finding my blog without my necessarily having given the posts a relevant tag, I ask myself "Why I should bother?" (the answer being, I suppose, that it is possible that I will have been talking about concepts which haven't been spelled out). At least one of my tags is a bit misleading - my iGoogle page has Audubon birds at the top, which I mentioned in the post, so I entered his name as a tag, but anyone hoping to find information about him, and finding my blog will be pretty disappointed. Indeed, I wonder whether I should leave Audubon as a tag (though as it is in the text of a post, it is, it appears, findable without it).
I have been tagging my posts as I go along (a number of years' cataloguing having trained me beyond help via LC subject headings??). I can't pretend that I have been particularly creative in the tagging, but I guess that I tend towards the practical and functional, in tagging and LC subject headings, and my posts are not particularly wide-ranging, mostly concentrating on the Thing in question.
The theory of classification in the article in the Thing was interesting. It seemed to equate tagging with classification schemes, which have one place where a book will physically sit, but to me they are more like LC subject headings (other subject heading systems are available ...). Granted, tagging doesn't have the constraints of a set system, but you can add more than one subject heading to reflect a book's containing a number of subjects, unlike a classification mark, where only one can be used. I guess that every attempt to categorise will have its faults. Tags allow the user to apply exactly what they want to use, but unless the searcher happens to light on what they have used, their blog (or whatever) may be lost. Subject headings and classification schemes may be more limited, in that someone else has to have decided that the subject is important, and all schemes have biases, but you do at least have the option of going to the source and finding out what has been used (wading through the cross-references, maybe). The spelling of words always has the potential to cause problems. The American wanting articles on colour may not find the English ones when searching on color (unless they are tagged with both spellings, or some other scheme of mapping the variations is used), with tagging and more traditional systems.
I have been tagging my posts as I go along (a number of years' cataloguing having trained me beyond help via LC subject headings??). I can't pretend that I have been particularly creative in the tagging, but I guess that I tend towards the practical and functional, in tagging and LC subject headings, and my posts are not particularly wide-ranging, mostly concentrating on the Thing in question.
The theory of classification in the article in the Thing was interesting. It seemed to equate tagging with classification schemes, which have one place where a book will physically sit, but to me they are more like LC subject headings (other subject heading systems are available ...). Granted, tagging doesn't have the constraints of a set system, but you can add more than one subject heading to reflect a book's containing a number of subjects, unlike a classification mark, where only one can be used. I guess that every attempt to categorise will have its faults. Tags allow the user to apply exactly what they want to use, but unless the searcher happens to light on what they have used, their blog (or whatever) may be lost. Subject headings and classification schemes may be more limited, in that someone else has to have decided that the subject is important, and all schemes have biases, but you do at least have the option of going to the source and finding out what has been used (wading through the cross-references, maybe). The spelling of words always has the potential to cause problems. The American wanting articles on colour may not find the English ones when searching on color (unless they are tagged with both spellings, or some other scheme of mapping the variations is used), with tagging and more traditional systems.
No comments:
Post a Comment